Dizzee Rascal goes full story-telling mode in this album cut from his debut Boy in da Corner. ‘Jezebel’, for lack of a better phrase, is a tale about the local sket – a lady who enjoys sex just a bit too much, doing with anyone anywhere she can with no shame.
There’s not much to explain lyrically as Dizzee very much depicts each scene with great clarity. ‘Jezebel’ has clearly taken the wrong path in her life and each verse just lets the listener delve further into her downward spiral, finishing off on a bit of a sad note as she wanders what she would do if she could start all over again.
Like the majority of tracks from the album, Dizzee handled the production himself – backing the narration with these plucked violin strings that give the song an almost childlike innocent feel to it even though the subject matter is the complete opposite.
This song does relate to our lord and saviour Jesus Christ a lot more than the previous post. It doesn’t tell a story about him, nor is it a passage from the Bible set to a piece of music. Closing out the first half of The Velvet Underground’s third album, ‘Jesus’ could be seen as something of a prayer.
“Jesus – help me find my proper place/Help me in my weakness ‘cause I’ve fallen out of grace” are the sole lines in this track, repeated over and over amidst tasteful guitar lines, arpeggiated bass notes and a beautiful harmony between Lou Reed and Doug Yule. Whether the track is taken to be serious is up for debate. This was the same band who were depicting scenes of orgies, drug use, and homosexuality on the previous album. And that was only in one song.
Maybe Lou Reed really was asking to be absolved of his sins. Sounds sincere to me but you never know. Nevertheless, ‘Jesus’, for me, is a highlight from an album that showed a wholesome side to The Velvet Underground. More quiet and digestible. A band you could let your parents listen to. These people couldn’t harm anyone.
This song isn’t about our lord and saviour Jesus Christ. You know when you hear or witness something incredibly dumb and over the top and you just roll your eyes and say “Jesus…” to yourself? I believe that’s what this song’s title is going for. Here, the statement reflects the narrator’s frustration with the poor music taste of the crowd and the people performing in front of them.
Throughout the track vocalist Gunnar Bergmann Ragnarsson constantly throws shade at those around him, calling the crowd “kitsch-ass motherfuckers” with “low IQs” who are destined for desk jobs and nothing more. He’s clearly having a miserable time. The music on the other hand is driven by these sleek guitars and a bouncy keyboard melody that doesn’t make things seem so dire. There’s a hip-hop like quality to the rhythm too, dominated by a hefty bass drum and some sampling in the small instrumental break before the bridge.
This track got some frequent play on MTV2 in the UK back in the day. I either always changed the channel when it came on, or it would be finishing when I changed to MTV2 to see what was going on. I didn’t give it a chance that much. That all changed when I actually got the band’s album. That was ten years ago, my god. One of my favourites by the band from the small selection of songs they made.
Near the end of Stephen Malkmus’ first album as a ‘solo’ artist is ‘Jenny & the Ess-Dog’ – a tale of two people who couldn’t be further apart on the social spectrum in terms of age (Jenny is just 18, the Ess-Dog (Sean) is 31) and upbringing but ultimately like each other enough to have a sweet relationship.
They listen to Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms album together and buy a pet – a dog – as some couples tend to do. Unfortunately, Jenny goes to college and the relationship eventually fizzles out leaving the two individuals to embark on their separate journeys.
The song is very easy-going and upbeat in its delivery, driven by a climbing/falling vocal melody backed by warm, sunny guitars and child-like keyboard patterns that guide each verse along. ‘Jenny’ is another track on the album that I always felt mirrored the freedom that Malkmus felt upon the split of Pavement in 1999. There was no track like this on Terror Twilight, and I guess he felt that he could with ease with the burden of his old band off his shoulders. This could have been a radio hit if he wanted it to be.
Its music video above has nothing to do with its lyrics as is the usual for a lot of Malkmus-related music videos though that shouldn’t take anything away from the song’s quality. Charming in its own strange way.
It seems that ‘Jenni’ is not available on YouTube to listen to, neither as its studio recording nor a live performance. I’m sure not everyone who reads this uses Spotify; I do, so that’s how I’ve linked it above. Sorry to those who don’t use it.*
Big Thief are probably my favourite band at the moment. It’s quite lucky that I only started listening to them at the beginning of this year and since then the group has released two great albums, both of which I can’t shake off, and have continued The first of them, U.F.O.F., was released in May. Two Hands followed over a month ago. I’ve witnessed comparisons between the two, as there were guaranteed to be some, and have seen that many people – by ‘many’ I mean a few comments on the Indieheads subreddit – seem to prefer Two Hands. I’m still listening to the songs from U.F.O.F. quite frequently though. While Two Hands is raw and quite naked in its production, the fullness and warm tones of its predecessor always get me going. I have a thing for chilled out, laid-back albums.
I was in a state between slumber and wakefulness when listening to U.F.O.F. for the first time on its release date and distinctly remember hearing ‘Jenni’, thinking how sort of heavy it was in comparison to the other eleven tracks on there. A millisecond fake-out clip begins the track, but when that first hit of the bass drum comes in with the guitars for the actual starting point it was like no moment of any other. On ‘Jenni’, it really sounds like the band were just in a large room and feeding off each other to produce this slow burning energy.
Unlike the majority of other songs on the album ‘Jenni’ has moments where the band just freak out, allowing moments of guitar feedback to ring out and rampant string bends to dominate the sound. Snippets of backwards cymbals glitch in and out of the mix as a swirling wall of sound reveals itself during the choruses. There are these brief occasions of dissonance during the verses that can add a speck of creepiness to the overall tone, but it resolves itself in the beautiful release of each chorus where songwriter Adrianne Lenker sings the track’s main refrain.
Who ‘Jenni’ is is a mystery, the answer to which only Lenker probably knows. The lyrics don’t leave much to try and pick out. Despite their simplicity, they’re still evoke vivid imagery of what is being described in each verse. The narrator – probably nervous, having a panic attack, unable to sleep, could be anything – sees Jenni – a friend, relative, spirit(?) – who then relieves the narrator from its anxious state by taking it through a mystical portal to an unknown destination. It’s like a strange, and very short, children’s story where what is occurring in the song is much darker than how it’s read.
This song is at the top of my ‘On Repeat’ playlist of ‘songs I can’t get enough of’ on Spotify right now. Everytime I hear it it’s like I’m sinking into my chair or whatever I’m comfortably positioned in at the time. A definite highlight, for me, from an album that I can’t stop listening to.
*At the time of writing this the song was not available on YouTube. That changed not too shortly after.
The Music in My Ears 
